The Lessons of Appeasement

Contrast this farce with the announcement that six of the alleged
co-conspirators in the 9/11 terrorist attack on America will be afforded
rights even greater than those given defendants at the Nuremberg Trials.
According to Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, who announced
that, "formal charges have been received," against the six, if a convening
authority refers the charges to trial, "the prosecution bears the burden of
proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard applied in
all U.S. and military criminal trials." The six individuals will also have
the right to appeal if they are convicted of any of the 169 charges against
them. Gen. Hartmann said these are the same rights afforded members of the
U.S. military, whom he called "our national treasure." Judge Susan Crawford,
head of military tribunals, will determine whether the charges allow the
prosecution to seek the death penalty.

In a phone interview, I asked Gen. Hartmann if a strategy had been developed
for the predictable domestic and world outcry from activists and nations
opposed to the death penalty. He said there is no such plan. There should
be.

What the United States still understands (though some presidential
candidates apparently do not) is that there are serious, dedicated people
who do not tire in their objective to see us dead. While 9/11 was an overt
act, many covert acts are occurring that will render Britain and America
less able (and less willing) to respond to the next attack. An estimated 2.5
million Muslims have invaded Britain. No one knows how many are committed to
the violent destruction of the West.

In America, there are similar threats. Debra Burlingame, sister of American
Airlines pilot Charles Burlingame, who died when terrorists hijacked his
plane on 9/11 and flew it into the Pentagon, wrote in The Wall Street
Journal, "Radical Islamists are a sophisticated and determined enemy who
understand that violence alone will not achieve their goals. Islamist front
groups, representing themselves as rights organizations, are attempting to
get a foothold here as they have already in parts of Western Europe by
deftly exploiting ethnic and racial politics, agitating under the banner of
civil liberties even as they are clamoring for the imposition of special
Sharia law privileges in the public domain."

There is a myth that the Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Too many of
the rest of us, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and elements of the
British government, are playing in a full orchestra of denial, oblivious to
the approaching firestorm. Neville Chamberlain's example should have been
enough for our time, but some people and nations have learned nothing from
history and so are doomed to repeat it.

Misc.

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